She regrets that Aram Manukyan is not a hero of our times.
Aravot.am asked the former NA MP, also a member of ARF Supreme Body, Lilit Galstyan, to comment on the saga of Aram Manukyan’s house located in the Arami Street. Ms. Galstyan noted that the house is beyond the cultural heritage as it has a spiritual and historical value, a memory, while today, the people who exercise power do not have this consciousness. “In given case, we are dealing with independent re-born state of Armenia, Aram Manukyan is not just a public figure, he is one of the prominent architects of the state and the respect for Aram Manukyan is the respect for the state. Doing homage to Aram Manukyan is doing homage to the state. He is a pan-Armenian wealth with his entire symbol,” says Lilit Galstyan and proves that the entire cultural layer of the Old Yerevan is destroyed, the house of Afrikyans and other buildings are ruined down, and there is no more historic period of Yerevan from the end of the 19th and early 20th century.
As for the allegations by relevant authorities that, among other buildings, Aram Manukyan’s house will be restored as well, Lilit Galstyan has a negative attitude, and says, “It would be a window dressing, we have seen the numbered fragments, which later perhaps would be assembled and we would have a purely commercial area, which will have a decorative significance rather than a historical and spiritual… The entire Yerevan and the country are treated as a business territory, our country is looked by the eyes of a business, but the piece of land is not just a land. Doesn’t it have a cadaster value? … This area has a spiritual, moral, historic and political significance for us … My child when passing by this place should know who Aram Manukyan is. Or else, many people think that they estimated true worth by erecting a miserable statue in front of the police building dedicated to Aram Manukyan and that’s it. Aram Manukyan is a symbol of a whole period, and unfortunately, those who exercise power do not have this consciousness.”
Ms. Galstyan said that in 1990-ies the issue was raised but nothing has been changed since, because, “a massacre of values has been going on in Armenia, we have cut our spiritual vein, consequently, accumulated negative energy does not become an energy of erection.” Our interlocutor regretfully states, “The consecutive officials come and try to pull the wool over the eyes that we would restore this-and-this, in reality, we do not preserve our cultural heritage, ranging from the “indoor market”.
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Lilit Galstyan recalled the statement made during her years as a parliamentarian. When in 2009, a governmental commission headed by the Prime Minister was founded to mark the 130th anniversary of Aram Manukyan’s birth, she and many other had a sense of gratification. “Alas, my gratification was purely theoretical and short, because those who were present in the so-called jubilee celebrations organized at the Opera House on February 19 experience deep disappointment, if not an insult… It was a provincial and tasteless event in a half-empty and dark hall, poorly designed and shameful acoustic sounding, which was not attended by any state-status collective concert. What was given to act accordingly? – reacted one of the participants, and I recalled the years of 2007 when 235 000 dollars was spent from the state budget for just one concert event and the “Eurovision” organized in the same hall lately, whose adventurous process, as if we do not have other sorrow, has occupied the newsfeed … While Aram Manukyan is not the hero of our times,” voiced Ms. Galstyan in her speech years ago.
Gohar HAKOBYAN
